1. Technical Field
This invention relates to telecommunications processing systems. In particular, this invention relates to an efficient and flexible architecture which integrates prepaid account processing systems and post-paid account processing systems.
2. Related Art
Rapid advances in data processing and telecommunications technology have lead to a vast array of communication services available to the consumer. Such telecommunication services include Internet service, cable television service, cellular phone service, paging service, combined voice and data delivery service, and many other services. Furthermore, most services may be wireless or wireline based.
With the increase in available services has also come increased flexibility in paying for those services. Traditionally, most customer accounts were post-paid accounts. For post-paid accounts, the service provider tracked all of the time a customer spent using a service, determined the applicable cost, and billed the customer (e.g., monthly). In other words, the customer paid only after using the service.
More recently, prepaid accounts have become a viable option for paying for telecommunications services. For a prepaid account, a customer makes an initial payment to the service provider which establishes a credit balance with the service provider. The customer may then use a telecommunications service until the credit balance is exhausted, with accounting performed during or after the termination of each service use transaction.
In the past, service providers implemented processing architectures in which independent systems supported prepaid and post-paid customers and performed customer management. The post-paid systems provided support for payment collection, invoicing, billing, discount and loyalty management, as well as other post-paid support functions. The prepaid systems provided support for credit refills, usage statements, balance management, and other prepaid support functions. However, architectures with independent prepaid, post-paid, and customer management processing systems significantly increased the complexity of providing both prepaid and post-paid services, resulted in a greater number of architectural impacts when rolling out new products, and increased both operational expenditures and capital expenditures to support products and services across both types of payment plans.
In addition, the lack of interaction between systems limited the products, services, discounts, billing flexibility, incentives, rewards, and other telecommunication service aspects which the service provider could provide for its customers. For example, a post-paid account generally had no interaction with a prepaid account, even when the accounts were for a common customer. Thus, the telecommunications service provider could not readily offer cross-product discounts, incentives, or billing options.